Comparison Table
Network Management Architecture Comparison
Side-by-side comparison of centralized and distributed network management architectures for enterprise infrastructure planning.
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Management Architecture Comparison
| Criterion | Centralized (On-Premises) | Cloud-Managed | Distributed (Per-Site) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Management plane location | Internal data centre | Vendor cloud | Local controller per site |
| Internet dependency | None for core operations | Required for management | None per site |
| Data residency | On-premises (full control) | Vendor-managed (review agreements) | On-premises per site |
| Scalability | Limited by on-premises hardware | Elastic | Scales with sites added |
| Deployment speed | Slower (hardware procurement) | Fast (SaaS) | Medium |
| Operational complexity | Medium–High | Low–Medium | High (per-site management) |
| CapEx vs OpEx | Higher CapEx, lower OpEx | Lower CapEx, higher OpEx | Medium CapEx per site |
| Best for | Regulated environments, data sensitivity | Multi-site, lean IT teams | Autonomous site operations |
| Canadian data residency | Controlled by organization | Review vendor data processing agreements | Controlled per site |
Management Protocol Comparison
| Protocol | SNMP v3 | Streaming Telemetry | NETCONF/YANG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary use | Monitoring, polling | Real-time monitoring | Configuration management |
| Data freshness | Per polling interval (5–15 min) | Sub-second to seconds | On-demand |
| Security | Authentication, encryption (v3) | TLS transport | SSH transport |
| Vendor support | Universal | Increasing (modern platforms) | Increasing (modern platforms) |
| Scalability | Limited at scale | High | Moderate |
| Standards body | IETF (RFC 3411) | IETF gNMI (OpenConfig) | IETF (RFC 6241) |